Emiel: From Geraardsbergen to Boston (52 Ancestors, #12)

This week we are going to get to know Emiel VanCauwenberg, not to be confused with Emily, Emiel’s daughter, who I wrote about a few weeks back.  Emiel was born in Geraardsbergen, Flanders, Belgium on March 20, 1866.  What makes this week different is that I do not have any photos of Emiel which is a first.  Many thanks to my friend and professional genealogist, Liz Barnett, for her amazing talent in composing this story basically from researching documents and her vast historical knowledge.  Everyone needs help from time to time and what makes “Getting to Know You” such a great blogging experience is all the help I’ve received from family and friends.  Contributions from family, friends and professional genealogists is so necessary and will make any budding genealogist’s work more enriching, exciting and successful!  So here is what Liz told me about Emiel…


Geraardsbergen, Belgium
(http://w0.fast-meteo.com/locationmaps/Geraardsbergen.8.gif)



The first record found for Emiel was the 1901 English census, which found him and his family living in the Hackney section of London, where Emiel worked as a cigar-maker. The family was still there in February 1902, when they welcomed daughter Mary Willhemina Van Cauwenberge (birth record 1902 Q2 v. 1b, p. 459, Hackney Registration District). Emiel left for the US soon after, arriving in New York on the SS "New York" from Southampton on July 5, 1903. He was described then as a married cigar-maker, aged 37, born in Belgium and of Flemish nationality, heading to a friend in Boston. Emiel was part of a wave of skilled Belgian and Dutch cigar-makers who came to Boston and other US cities in the late 19th and early 20^th century. Their presence upset other cigar-makers, whose union protested their influx, feeling they did not support the established unions. So many Belgians came to Boston that they formed a "Belgian Union" in 1907, and later a federation to support their countrymen at home in the wake of WWI.

Cigar maker photo

 Ref: http://www.cigarhistory.info/History_of_Cigars/History_1860-1960.html

Emiel's wife, the Netherlands-born Marie Wilhelmina Feller or Filler, followed Emiel with their children, arriving at NY on the SS "Kroonland" on June 7, 1904. (The purser's handwriting is so difficult to decipher that the surname was transcribed as "Coreabey" by the Ancestry indexers, and "Covebeity" by the indexers at Ellis Island's website.) The "Kroonland"'s passenger list shows Mary, "Alina", Frank, and little Mary were heading to "Emil", then living at 34 Highland St. in Chelsea, Mass.  Daughter Emelie was not listed with them, and may have arrived earlier or perhaps was inadvertently omitted from the list; in 1905 she married fellow-immigrant Casimir Bruyneel, who also lived on Highland St., at #93.

Kroonland

Ref:http://www.norwayheritage.com/gallery/gallery/Steamship_Companies/Red_Star_Line/02kroon-rsl.jpg)

 

Emiel found work in Boston as a cigar-maker, and by 1910 the family was settled in South Boston. Emiel's English was apparently good enough that he also worked as an interpreter for the Immigration Service.  They later moved to Dorchester, where Emiel and his wife raised their four children and at least 2 grandchildren. Although in 1920 Emiel claimed to have started the naturalization process, no record was found of his becoming an American citizen. At the 1940 census (in which he was named as "Amiel Vann"), his wife told the census taker that Emil had submitted the initial papers for naturalization but neither was yet a citizen. She and her husband then lived at 155 L St. in Boston, along with a great-grandson, Robert "Burnell", aged 14 (elder son of their widowed grandson, Oscar Bruynell). 

Emiel died of a cerebral thrombosis in the Boston City Hospital in 1943. He was buried in St. Joseph's Cemetery in West Roxbury (under the name Vann), as was his wife in 1957; their daughter Helena (Van Cauwenberge) Stephan, who died in the 1918 flu epidemic, is also there.  The informant for his death record was his son, Frank H. Vann, who said that his father's parents were "John Vann" and "Adelaide Vanderhooten", both born in Belgium.

Grave at St. Joseph’s Cemetary in W. Roxbury

The naturalization petition of Emiel's son, Frank, said he was born in "Grammont, Oost Flanderen" (East Flanders); Frank's WWII draft card also said he was born in "Gramont, Belgium", today more commonly known with its Flemish name, as Geraardsbergen, Flanders, Belgium. When Frank died in 1950 his death record said that Frank's's father was born in Brussels, but the informant was not a family member and may have been mistaken; Geraardsbergen is 23 miles from Brussels.  A logical place to look for Emiel's birth would be Geraardsbergen or one of the villages nearby. Frank gave a very specific age for his father at death: "77 years, 1 month, 10 days"; the year corresponds exactly with Emiel's age on arrival in the US in 1903.

Note:  If I could have a conversation with Emiel today of course I would like to find out more about his family in Belgium.  It must have been difficult for him to move from Belgium to London to Boston in a short span of time – what was it like to live in three different cultures? 

 

Emelie (VanCauwenberge) Bruyneel Stevens Jones (52 Ancestors - #3)

Emelie (Van Cauwenberge) Bruyneel Stevens Jones was born around 1888 in Belgium, probably like her brother Frank in or near the town of Geraardsbergen, also known as "Gramont"or "Grammont", in East Flanders. She immigrated to the US around 1904, probably with her mother and siblings to join her father. Along with other Dutch and Flemish immigrants who worked as cigarmakers, the Van Cauwenberges had lived for a few years in the Hackney section of London, where they had been listed in the 1901 England census. Emelie's father worked in London and later in Boston as a cigar-maker.   Emelie's father, Emiel (or Emil) Van Cauwenberge, immigrated to the US in 1903, and her mother and siblings followed in June 1904 on the SS "Kroonland", but Emelie was not listed on that passenger list. She may have come separately, or perhaps was inadvertently omitted from the list.



Emily VanCauwenberge (taken on April 11th, 1953 @ Margie (Bruynell) and John Conroy's wedding)

Before a Justice of the Peace in May 1905 in Chelsea, MA, Emelie married her first husband, fellow Belgian immigrant Casimir Bruyneel, whose later records show he was from the same town as the Van Cauwenberges, Grammont/Geraardsbergen, in East Flanders. On the marriage record she was listed as a servant, and at only 17 had to have permission from her father. The marriage resulted in one child, Oscar, born a scant two months later, but Emelie and Casimir were divorced before the 1910 census, when she and her son resided with her parents. Emelie then worked as a chocolate dipper.

Emily's marriage to Casimir Bruyneel

Just three months after the census was taken, in July 1910 Emelie married for the second time (again before a JP), to Belgian immigrant cigarmaker Louis Stevens, who had been boarding with her family. Tragically, Louis Stevens died in April 1913 from endocarditis, at the Rutland State Sanatorium where he had been treated for three months for pulmonary tuberculosis; he was buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston. No evidence was found of children from their marriage.

Emily's Marriage to Louis Stevens

In September 1918 Emelie married a third and final time (again before a JP), to London-born Harry Jones. Despite his British name, Harry was the son of Dutch parents, Hendrikus and Johanna (Versluis) Fukker, who at his birth were living in the Mile End Old Town section of London's East End. Young Harry had arrived in New York with his mother and several siblings in February 1903 from Liverpool on the SS "Umbria", joining his father, a cigar-maker born in Rotterdam in 1872. The Fukkers had married and had a first child in Holland before moving to England, where several of their children were born from 1896-1901. Harry's birth (as Henry Fukker) was registered in 1898. The elder Henry Fukker moved to Boston in August 1902, preceding his family just as Emelie's father did. Given their similar origins and profession it is very likely the two families knew each other in England and certainly in Boston. By 1910 the Fukkers (or Jones as they were called in the census, though still Fukker in the Boston City Directory) lived in the 14th Ward, on Burnham Place. Harry's father formally changed the family name when he applied for US citizenship in 1915; as a minor, Harry was included in Henry's naturalization. Therefore, when Emelie married Harry in 1918, by the laws of the time, she automatically became a US citizen, and never had to apply in her own right.

At the 1940 census Emelie (now Emily) and Harry lived in South Boston on East Fifth St.; Harry worked as a driver for a coal company. In their household was their son, Harry, Jr. aged 12, and Emily's widowed son, Oscar Bruynell (here confusingly called Harry's "son-in-law" and named Oscar "Brown").

When Emily's third husband, Harry, died in November 1963 they lived at 48 Newport St. in Dorchester. Harry died of heart disease and emphysema, and was laid to rest in a plot he (or possibly his son, Harry Jones, Jr.) had purchased at Mt. Hope Cemetery. When Emily died two years later in the Hogdon Nursing Home in Roxbury of pneumonia and a stroke she was buried in the same plot (by the FF O'Brien Funeral Home). Her son, Oscar Bruynell, was the informant for the death certificate. He said her parents were "Wilhelmina Feller" and "Emil Van" (using a surname spelling similar to that adopted by Emily's siblings Francis Vann and Marie W. (Vann) Morton). Although Emily had only two children, she left at least 7 grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren.

Note: If I met Emily today, I would ask her to introduce me to her son, Harry Jones.  I would also like to know what it was like to immigrate from Belgium to England to the U.S. 

Written by Liz Barnett (8/2013)